


In the woods somewhere.

by Blackwing602



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Backstory, Child Abandonment, Child Neglect, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Non-Binary Frisk, One Shot, Past Child Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 11:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5741929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackwing602/pseuds/Blackwing602
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Whether your hand gave way or you let go, you do not know, only that it happened, you fell, fell, fell….</p><p>… And woke in a patch of pure sunshine in a pile of fragrant golden flowers, dust motes dancing before your eyes, the howling gone.</p><p>I have died, you had decided. This was heaven, and it wasn’t so bad.' Frisk-centric one-shot, part 1/?</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the woods somewhere.

**Author's Note:**

> "I clutched my life  
> And wished it kept.  
> My dearest love, I’m not done yet.
> 
> How many years  
> I know I’ll bear  
> I found something in the woods somewhere."  
> In the Woods Somewhere - Hozier
> 
> Warning for suicidal thoughts/hinted attempt, and child neglect/abuse.

There are things you do not talk about.

There are lots of things you do talk about – laughing at all of Sans’ bad puns, pretending to act scared at Papyrus’s latest japes, sweet nothings into Toriel’s sweet smelling fur, discussing the latest in monster-human relations with Asgore, and relating war stories with Undyne. You talk to Alphys, too, although it’s a lot of listening, about her latest science projects, anime, and above all, her sweet Undyne. Mettaton is much the same too – ever since he launched his hugely successful show, beauty line, and even hotels, it was a wonder to even get him on a phone for a few minutes. The only person he really seems to catch up with is you and Napstablook.

In the midst of all this, and all of your ambassadorial duties – meetings, congresses, celebrations every weekend, finding your voice to be far louder and further reaching than you ever could have hoped, you talk about an awful lot, and you often times find your voice quite hoarse at the end of the day. Yourself tends to be the last thing you talk about, and it’s a a dead zone once that question pops out, however rare it may be.

“How did you fall from Mount Ebbot?” 

“Next question, sir,” you say politely. They frown, but do not object, and move along. 

You do not talk about your abandonment by humanity. You rarely think of them now – it’s almost entirely another life for you, now. The father who could never feel love, burrowing himself fully in his career as a salaryman until the job swallowed him whole and took him away. You remember seeing him come home in the same tired gray suit, smelling of a few beers too many, stumbling home from the last train of the night. Dropping his keys and briefcase on the table and falling over as he tried to kick off his shoes and passing out unceremoniously on the couch. You often would run up and grab his hand, kiss his cheek, saying “Papa, papa! I missed you!” 

You remember he shooed you away drunkenly, a swat that would have stung had it landed. He always did. But you still always tried.

You can also remember your mother – she had pretty blonde hair and you shared the same warm brown eyes. She worked a lot too, but she remembered you a little better than your father. She came home in the evenings every night smelling of fries and burgers, arms burgeoning with leftovers from her shift at the diner. She always left it all on the table and you took what you liked and sat in front of the TV while she showered and changed for her next shift. She would come out smelling sweet, black formal slacks and a white button-down blouse and a pretty gloss on her lips. She used to kiss you and give you a cuddle before she rushed out, but towards the end she never said anything to you. 

The last time you saw your father, you were nine. There was no momentous argument, no beatings, no holes in the wall, no struggle. He left for the morning train with a duffel bag instead of a suitcase. It was the first time he had never done that, and you wondered why as you watched him leave.

He did not look back at you, standing in the open door with the summer morning air rolling in.

The last train of the night finished it’s circuit at 12:07, and by one AM your father was still gone. Your mother didn’t acknowledge his absence, but by this point you couldn’t remember what her voice sounded like because she never spoke to you. She slept during the morning when you readied yourself for school, and besides the in-and-out at nine PM every night, you never saw one another. An ordinary child would be thrilled – no parental supervision, you could eat whatever you wanted, watch whatever you wanted, have your friends over every day if you wanted.

But you weren’t hungry. You didn’t want to watch anything. You had no friends. But you were so affection starved it was maddening.

There was a phase where you acted badly to see what would happen. Momma came home to a destroyed house – trash strewn everywhere, soda spilled on the couch and carpet, people having sex on the TV, stereo blaring, mud tracked all up and down the house.

She did not take one look at what you had done, or you. She dropped her bags of oily fast food and sped straight up the stairs. 

You hadn’t thought of that – sabotaging her nightly ritual. The next day she came home to all her makeup strewn everywhere and the bathroom mirror broken.

She said not a single word. Not one look. She readied herself with what she could salvage and left all the same. You threw a vase at her head as she closed the door and collapsed on the floor, sobbing with the open abandon of someone who lost all hope.

Once she forgot to bring home food for you.

And then she never brought food for you. 

A call from your school, after a week of this, was the first time she spoke to you in months, and oh was it sweet. They mentioned they’d caught you smuggling food home in your backpack, and inquired at the state of your home life. Your mother was all smiles for the principal, but on the train home she took you into her arms and kissed your forehead, like she used to, and rubbed noses with you.

“I’m sorry, pumpkin,” she whispered. “It’s been such a hard time for me. I’m sorry ignored you. I’ll tell you what – I’ll take the afternoon off tomorrow and we’ll go to the aquarium, okay?”

The plan was, to maximize your time together, she would take the morning shift and meet you at the aquarium. You dressed in your favorite sweater, which fell to your knees, and black tights with the cute boots she bought for you last year. You waited.

You waited for five hours.

You cried a lot, sitting on that bench by the train tracks as train after train rolled in, and no mother. You looked hopefully at any blonde woman who came off, but none of them were yours. Your stomach growled and threatened to eat itself, just like last week. 

You waited past the last train. A tottering old man was it’s only passenger to leave, and a handful of rumpled teenagers boarded. With a chime, it rolled out of the station.

The aquarium was closed so you walked the other way, into the Mount Ebbot nature trail. You’d heard stories, that it was haunted, that at least seven children had fallen into it’s slippery mouth and died, never seen again. There was a howling wind that never stopped up there, and spirits were restless. The way was locked shut by a rickety wooden gate, but you were small, and slipped through the cracks and made your way up the trail in the pitch black.

It was fall, still warm, but the nights felt winter’s touch, and you quickly came to shivering in your sweater. You scraped your knees open on the slate rocks when you lost your footing and cried openly, trudging onward, wiping your eyes with your sleeves. Where you were going, you did not know. But you wanted to climb to the top, maybe to see the sunrise over Kanagawa. Maybe you were just whiling away the hours until the trains opened again and you could go home. 

At the ripe age of ten, you had decided you wanted to quietly die.

It was indeed just before dawn when you reached the top of Mount Ebbot, after a treacherous four hour hike. You had to urinate a couple times along the way, and chewed on a branch you found to keep your mind off the hunger tearing apart your stomach. You were so empty of tears there were none left.

Mount Ebbot’s maw terrified you. It was pitch black and dark, and frightful cold air came howling out of it. It sounded as if it was screaming, at you.

This frightened you, and you decided that, if you were so scared, you must not really want to die, and it would be best to sit on a stump and watch the sunrise, make the long trek back, and go home. You started to pull yourself away from the maw, but a root caught your foot and you fell, sprawling, and then the ground gave way….

And you were dangling with only a hand clawing at that root like a lifeline, before the the huge, encompassing jaws of Mount Ebbot. You were going to die. This was how it ended.

Whether your hand gave way or you let go, you do not know, only that it happened, you fell, fell, fell….

… And woke in a patch of pure sunshine in a pile of fragrant golden flowers, dust motes dancing before your eyes, the howling gone.

I have died, you had decided. This was heaven, and it wasn’t so bad.

… Then a flower tried to kill you and you decided this was, indeed, not heaven, and the rest is history.

The memories are there, buried tightly and deeply within you, but you weren't sure you could ever tell someone. When you first came back, you thought about trying to contact you parents again, but after you had found out they hadn’t even bothered filing a police report for you, you decided it was a lost cause, and besides, your new parents were more than loving, and never, never abandoned you, never forgot about you, always talked to you and made time for you…

You think Sans knows. You think he can see, sometimes, in the way you always take care of yourself but put everyone else first, the way you anxiously check your phone sometimes, the way you love Toriel and Asgore so fiercely, the way you fight with all your determination for equal monster rights, the past that led you to your new life. You wonder, sometimes, in the night when your belly is full and head resting between Toriel’s as she reads her book in her armchair beside the fire, if you truly did die up there on Mount Ebbot. And began a new life. If that was true, you suppose you could live with that.

Sans is kind. He never asks, never questions you when you fret when he walks away without you. You know he has, pun intended, nearly as many skeletons in his past as you do, but you are young and take advantage of the fact for now. There will be many years down the road to air out one another’s laundry.

Perhaps you’ll talk about it one day. It would provide a lot of context to your situation, and it would feel good to have someone understand why you are who you are. But for now, you find there are some things that do not need saying.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. ❤️ just my private head canon of what happened to Frisk.


End file.
